Mafia Champs 2026

[Clovdyx]

INVITATION TO THE MAFIA CHAMPIONSHIP (SEASON 13)

 

Ahoy there! 🙂

 

I’m very excited to invite your community to participate in Season 13 of the Mafia Championship.

 

The Mafia Championship is an annual forum-based tournament series that pits representatives from various online Mafia (aka Werewolf) communities against one another as they compete to determine the Internet’s greatest Mafia players. Each participating community democratically elects one person to represent them and be their “Champion”.

 

The tournament first started back in 2013. Since then, 420+ different communities and 50+ different nationalities have been represented.

 

It’s a super fun event that has created many new friendships and close bonds between communities. I hope that you would be interested in taking part 🙂

1. DO YOU ACCEPT THE INVITATION?

If your community wishes to participate, please confirm your participation with Arapocalypse or Master Radishes as soon as possible to secure a spot. Currently, the plan is to accommodate 136 communities this season. 

 

If your community agrees to participate, the deadline for selecting your representative is March 4th, but the sooner the better. 

 

The games will take place on Mafia Universe. If you’re interested, I can link directly to the general discussion thread regarding this topic on Mafia Universe.

 

Important notes

• You may decide how you want to elect your representative, but we recommend some sort of democratic process (public nominations followed by a poll usually works out well). Once your rep has been decided, let us know directly as soon as possible!

• In addition to electing a representative, you should also name an alternate (a back-up) who will be asked to step in if the first choice needs to back out.

• These games are typically very active! Your representative should be prepared to read upwards of 500-1000 posts per 24 hours during the early days of the game. This volume may vary drastically depending on how active the players in your game are, and we can’t guarantee if you will be in a low or high volume game before the game starts! Only active players should apply/participate. To reiterate: Your chosen representative must be able to handle a good amount of daily activity!

• Activity requirement: each player must write at least 10 posts per Game Day. That said, be aware players typically post much more than 10 times to engage meaningfully with the game! We don’t recommend a specific number, but it often helps players to check in a few times each day and stay up to date in the game when possible, to reduce getting overwhelmed catching up on posts!

2. SEASON 13 FORMAT

The tournament structure

136 communities will participate, each sending one representative.

• QUALIFIERS: 8 Qualifier Games will be played, consisting of 17 players each. I.e. every representative plays in one Qualifier Game. The players themselves vote post-game to determine who is deserving of advancement. 1st and 2nd places will advance to the Semifinal Games.

• BONUS ROUND: Any community backups who were not called on during the Qualifier round will be invited to play in a special Game of Backups, a chance for them to participate in champs hype!

• SEMIFINALS: A Jury consisting of finalists from Season 12 will select 29 additional players to advance to the three Semifinal Games. From each game, five players will advance to the Finale Game based on a post-game player vote, just like in the qualifying phase.

• THE FINALE: The Finale Game is played. Once it has completed, the winning team will receive the title of Season 13 Champions and a winner’s certificate signed by Dmitry Davidoff, the creator of mafia. 

The qualifier games will be played using the Matrix 2x5 setup (see below), and semifinal/finale games will be played using the Mountainous setup. 

 

This year’s Qualifier Setup: Matrix 2x5

This (view picture below) is a semi-open grid setup meant for 17 players: 4 mafia versus 13 townies. 

*Town Jack of All Trades: 1x Vigilante, 1x Roleblocker, 1x Tracker

 

First you randomly select a number to decide the Mafia team's composition of Power Roles (1-2), then you randomly select a letter to decide the Town's composition of Power Roles (A-E). Fill in the number of Vanilla Townies needed to make the Town team have 13 members total, and you have your setup.

 

Important Notes for Matrix 2x5

• The Mafia's factional kill must be assigned to a single member of their team each night. This means that the Mafia's factional kill can, for example, be blocked by a Town Jailkeeper or tracked by a Town Tracker.

• None of the included roles can self-target, including the protective roles.

• Doctors, Jailkeepers, and Roleblockers are not allowed to target the same players on consecutive nights.

• The Even Night Vigilante may only shoot on even nights (i.e. Night 2, Night 4, etc.).

• The Voyeur's own action will not show up in their result.

This year’s Semifinals/Finale Setup: Mountainous

x12 Vanilla Town

x3 Mafia Goon

 

Relevant mechanics info for both Matrix 2x5 and Mountainous Setups

• Day start.

• Majority elimination will not be enabled during Day 1 and is not required at any point for the elimination. Majority will be turned on as an option starting Day 2, with a delay. 

• Tied votes will result in one of the tied players being eliminated at random

• Votes are automatically locked in at LYLO

• No outside communication. I.e. you may not contact the other players outside of the thread (unless you are Mafia and wish to speak with your teammates).

• Mafia may communicate any time. We suggest using a Discord server for mafia chat!

• Mafia share a mandatory factional Night Kill, a single standard shot for their faction. 

• Phase Lengths/Deadlines are up to the players (based on player preferences)

• Thread is locked during Night Phases.

• Each individual player may make a maximum of 125 posts per day phase (the postcap will be either lifted by a few posts or increased at 1 hour before EoD).

• An organizer will oversee everything and make sure everyone’s following the code of conduct, but otherwise the game is completely automated (automatic votecounts, thread locks and reveals alignments automatically, receiving/processing actions, etc.)

3. SEASON 13 TIMELINE

There will be 8 Qualifier Games, and your representative plays in just one of these. Their start dates are each Monday from March 9th – April 27th. In other words, as long as your representative can play sometime during that period, they should be good and I’ll make sure they get scheduled into a game that suits their schedule. 

 

The 3 Semifinal Games will be played in May/June/July, and the Finale Game sometime in July/August/September (whenever we can work out something that suits everyone). The Game of Backups will be played between the Qualifiers and Semifinal Games.
 

If you want to get in contact with us ASAP, you can reach us on Discord at lissa2, arapocalypse, or masterradishes.

 

Kind regards,

The Season 13 Championship Organizers

[Clovdyx]

I'm not Lissa.

[Ithillian Turambar]

Are you a radish?